Platform – it’s a word that most writers I know detest. It makes us think of unachievable numbers on social media that will keep us from writing itself. Guh!

The Groups to Which We are Connected

But at our writers’ retreat here a few weeks ago, literary agent Ruth Samsel reminded us that platform isn’t just online. Platform is also all the people you know in real life, all the organizations of which you’re a part, all the places you might go to speak. As Ruth spoke, I could see the faces around the room relax and then begin to shimmer as we thought of our churches, our volunteer work, our children’s schools. Suddenly, we had a whole community of people to whom we could connect without the need of status updates or tweets. It was liberating.

As I’ve been pondering Ruth’s wisdom, I’ve been thinking about all the embodied places I know people, the genealogical and historical societies of which I’m a part because of the work I do on the history and legacy of enslavement, the local businesses and organizations where I spend my time, the parenting groups that I’m just beginning to know. Now, I’m beginning to see how the work I already do because I love it or need it can also benefit me as a writer – be that benefit in book sales or maybe, someday, even finding an agent.

The People We Meet

It’s not just groups where I’m seeking that connection either. Today, I’m having lunch with a descendant of the people who owned the plantation where I grew up, the one I wrote about in The Slaves Have Names. She’s read my book – and wants to buy a signed copy – and she wants to talk about it. I don’t know many writers who don’t want to talk about their work. I especially love to talk about that work with people who are tied to it by family. It’s a special kind of conversation, this one.

But in terms of marketing, this is also a win because, hopefully, this woman will also tell people about the book. Maybe her niece will write about it for school, as the daughter of one friend did. Maybe she’ll invite me to a family reunion to talk about the book and the history of her family. There are a lot of maybes, all exciting and all brought about potential because of a person I’ve met face-to-face.*

Accepting the Platform Reality and Loving the Freedom

The truth is that platform is something you need to think about if you’re going to be a writer who hopes to make a living at this work. If you’re like me, you need to find clients for your editing services, want to sell books, and hope to – maybe, someday – find an agent. Or maybe you’re starting out and would like to find some paying gigs for writing but need to prove you can bring readers by showing visitor numbers for your blog. Or maybe you have an agent and a manuscript on the market and need to get those numbers on social media up to secure that publishing contract. If you’re writing for a living, platform matters.

But there’s a lot of freedom in how you construct that platform. You can do a lot of it online, which is great for an introvert like me who is now even more isolated because of a newborn. But you can also do a lot of it in person by thinking widely and deeply about the groups and people you already know who might be interested in your book or who might be able to tell people who are interested.

In the business world, we call this kind of connection creation networking, but I hate that word more than I hate the word platform. So let’s call it what it really is, community. In a community, we support one another. We ask each other for help, and we enjoy giving it. In a community, we realize that none of us can do this alone.

So really, it’s not about the numbers, at least not for the writer. Really, it’s about the connection, the thread that ties us together, the tapestry of lives woven tighter by our words. When I think of it that way, platform actually sounds kind of beautiful.

*An important note. I love the internet. I love social media. I love the people I’ve met there, and I consider many of them true, deep friends. So I’m not, in any way, disparaging online connections. I love them.

While I’m on maternity leave with Baby Milo, a few dear friends have written pieces just for you all. I know you’ll enjoy them, and I hope you’ll find some new writers to follow and add to your community. Today’s post is by the gifted Dorcas Cheng-Tozun.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

There’s a narrative about rejection that writers like to tell. It often starts with a number: how many rejections they received, either from publishers or publications, for a particular manuscript.

Then the tale quickly moves to how they embraced those rejections. They took those letters and emails, printed them out, and pinned them on the wall. They used those nos as inspiration, as fuel, as a much-needed kick in the butt to work harder and longer. They read and re-read those rejections, and then they turned around and wrote incredible, world-changing words.

I have never understood those stories. After being a full-time writer for more than six years, I still have a hard time receiving rejections.

The first time my agent submitted a book proposal of mine to publishers, a budding hope rose within me and lodged itself in my throat. The dream was happening. Any day now, I was going to get the email or phone call that changed my life.

A few weeks of silence passed. And then a few more weeks.

“How long before we’ll hear back?” I eagerly asked my agent.

“It should be soon,” she promised. “I’ll follow up.”

Her next email began with a gentle introduction about the “passes” we got. A list of feedback from various editors followed: “Not a fit.” “Didn’t connect with the voice.” “Not what we’re looking for.” “The narrative arc needs work.” “Not a market for this content.”

As a skimmed through the email, I waited for the exhilaration to set in. I was now part of the esteemed group of writers who had experienced rejection! I waited for my competitive, can-do spirit to flourish, for my creative juices to start flowing.

Instead, all I felt was heartache. And, if I’m honest, a measure of humiliation. I had spent the better part of two years working on this manuscript, and now a dozen people were telling me that it simply wasn’t good enough.

It was a painful reality to swallow—even if those editors were absolutely right. I could do better, and I had to do better if I wanted to get published.

So I hunkered down and revised and rewrote and reconfigured. And more rejections came in. And still more. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling that every no was proof of my failure.

Now a few years wiser, I have come to understand that rejection is an inevitable rite of passage for the writer who wants to be published in a competitive marketplace. To some degree, we need rejections because they tell us that we have a little more work to do. We need to hone our craft, or improve our storytelling, or more carefully edit our manuscript. Or perhaps we simply need to do more research to find the right home for our stories.

In their own way, the dozens (maybe hundreds? I don’t keep track) of rejections I’ve received over the years have done their part to make me a more effective writer. I’d like to think they’ve even provided valuable lessons in character development—keeping me humble, pushing me to persevere, and teaching me gratitude for the doors of opportunities that do end up opening.

To this day, though, rejections still smart. I don’t despair in quite the same way I used to when I first started out as a writer. Deep in my rational thinking brain, I understand and appreciate the benefits of the pruning, refining process of hearing no.

Yet I can’t help but feel something when a “pass” lands in my inbox—disappointment, discouragement, dejection.

For a long time, I tried to suppress those emotions, willing myself to be invigorated by the nos. I’ve finally come to realize that I’m never going to be the kind of writer who relishes rejections and revisits them for inspiration. I will feel what I feel. And that’s okay, because in the end I will still put my head down, sit myself in front of the computer, and keep working hard.

Today I give myself permission to do what I need to do when I get a no that I desperately wanted to be a yes. I let myself mourn for a day or two. I take in the feedback that is helpful and allow myself never to look at those rejections again. And then I try again.

The resulting story of my writing journey doesn’t sound quite as heroic or impressive as that of the writers who are able to laugh in the face of rejection, who enthusiastically defy those nos. But it’s honest. It’s who I am. I regularly feel pain and grief, even as I pursue the soul-nourishing work I love so dearly.

This path of both hope and heartache continues its pruning process in my writing and my character. And out of that, perhaps some incredible, world-changing words may yet emerge.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun is an award-winning writer, a columnist for Inc.com, and the author of Start, Love, Repeat: How to Stay in Love with Your Entrepreneur in a Crazy Start-up World (Hachette Center Street). She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her entrepreneur husband and two adorable hapa sons. Connect with her at www.chengtozun.com or on Twitter/Instagram @dorcas_ct.

While I’m on maternity leave with Baby Milo, a few dear friends have written pieces just for you all. I know you’ll enjoy them, and I hope you’ll find some new writers to follow and add to your community. Today’s post is by the amazing Cara Meredith.

Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

I have a tendency to camp out on the surface.

First drafts are always notoriously that: first drafts. If I’m lucky, the words tumble out, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. I take this as a sign – my sign, the sign – that I’ve gone as far as I can go, that I’ve dug tent stakes deep into the ground.

But then questions bubble up: What are you really trying to say here? What’s beneath the surface?

Sometimes the observation comes from me, an hour, a month, a year or two or five after the original draft. Sometimes the comment comes from a reader or an editor, from someone who’s trying to make sense of my words, who’s attempting to help me tell my truest and most authentic story.

Back in December, I handed over the first draft of my manuscript to a handful of friends: women and men, writers and pastors and educators, people of color and white people, too. Help me killing the darlings! Tell me when I need to dig in, even deeper! Nothing short of enthusiastic, I begged for their feedback. I reasoned there might be a bit of editing I’d have to do in order to make my deadline at the end of the January. It was nothing a couple of weeks couldn’t handle.

A couple of weeks later, I printed out a copy for myself and began reading through all 67,908 words. By the end of the first chapter, I didn’t need anyone else to tell me what my eyes clearly saw: I needed to dig in deeper.

Soon enough, the margins of the double-spaced document were filled with scribbles and notations of “More, more!” By the time a pile of manuscripts arrived in my mailbox, I felt prepared for their critique, ready to plumb the narrative depths.

Within a couple of days, my publisher granted me an extension, and I started rewriting two-thirds of the original manuscript – because, among other things, I’d barely scratched the surface.

My friend Alia, one of the beta readers, attributed it to the Enneagram.

“The problem is that you had two Fours as beta readers,” she said to me. A Four herself, she tended to “feel all the feels”; grappling with her thoughts and feelings wasn’t a big deal, the connection of heart to fingertips to page as natural for her as breathing. But for me, the heart-fingers-page connection seems to take a little more time. As a Seven, I can easily live on the surface: smiles and light-heartedness, complete with a sugarcoated dusting of optimism, ooze out of my pores. It’s not that depth isn’t there, that feelings and thoughts and opinions don’t exist in my body, but it just takes me a little longer to get there.

Sometimes it takes me a draft, or two, or thirty to really get to the heart of what I’m trying to say – to come to a full understanding of the stories already written on my soul.

“I feel like I’m on the 30th draft of this chapter!” I said to my agent over email one day, at the height of rewriting the manuscript.

Her reply came within seconds. “Go for 31.”

Maybe that’s what it is for all of us as writers: no matter our tendencies or our struggles, we still go for 31. When we find ourselves barely scratching the surface because we want to make others laugh and we want to see life through an effervescent pair of rose-colored glasses, we instead make the choice to go for 31. We fill in the blanks, digging in to the heart of the pain, on to the root of the story.

Eventually we get there, as we always do before it starts all over again.

Cara Meredith is a writer and speaker from Seattle, Washington. Her first book, The Color of Life: A White Woman’s Journey Toward Love and Justice, releases in January 2019 (Zondervan). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and on her website.

While I’m on maternity leave with Baby Milo, a few dear friends have written pieces just for you all. I know you’ll enjoy them, and I hope you’ll find some new writers to follow and add to your community. Today’s post is from the stunning Marvia Davidson.

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash article by mdavidson

It happened on a Saturday night. I was perusing my Facebook account and catching up with the latest news from friends and family when one particular headline caught my eye. It was a lengthy article detailing how significant numbers of African Americans were leaving white evangelical churches. As I read the article, it hit a nerve and bothered me in a way I could not articulate. There are moments a social issue hits the heart demanding a response or engagement, and sometimes I do not know what to do with what I think or feel about the issue. This post isn’t about the article but about how our thinking and writing can be suppressed rather than free when dealing with difficult subjects. Writing can be a catalyst to help us figure out more of who we are and how we navigate life. While I am not a writing expert, this one thing I know: we find our voice in wrestling our words.

Most of what I write is faith-based and from a personal, real-life-talk perspective. It is rare for me to write about issues like racism, race relations, politics, or other hot-topic, contentious subjects. I have not written about them purposely, but that is changing. The day I read that article on African Americans leaving white evangelical churches was a moment I realized I’d been carrying a weight of uncomfortable, unspoken words for months. I held them inside myself, clumsily stitched on my heart like patchwork. I thought holding the words would be safe and less scary. I thought it might guard my sanity and help me avoid unnecessary conflict. Better to keep them to myself then to share them online. A notion like this was not helpful for my writer heart. The reality is writing can help us resolve and clearly voice what is in our minds. This is something we cannot be afraid to do as writers, but it’s also a work we cannot always do in isolation.

It is hard to broach challenging issues in online spaces without feeling like you’ll be ostracized, bullied, or shut down before you’ve had a chance to voice your your mind. Social media platforms seem to have become contentious in recent years, and it can be tough to share and resolve issues. I don’t want to disengage or let my words to waste away within me, but I didn’t know where or how to begin the conversation on tough social and political issues. I wanted to engage in such a way that there could be civility and hope. I have seen the uglier side of social media platforms where you share words but then find yourself suddenly unfriended, argued down, berated, or blocked. I wonder if we’re afraid or incapable of holding space for civil disagreement. After reading the article, I decided I wanted, needed, and had to talk about it.

I knew I didn’t want to have the conversation on my personal Facebook page because the people I know range the political and religious spectrum. I opted to pose the question to a politically diverse online writing group. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew I was ready to flesh out my thoughts. I also knew my writing community was a safe one where I would be heard and offered civility and gentle challenging questions. My community asked me good questions to get me thinking. I pondered their words and then sat to write, and I kept writing until I had nearly 2000 bottled up words splashed across my computer screen! I was surprised. Those words flowed out of me like a water hose on full blast. My writing community helped me liberate my words and to heal a bit of my writer soul that laid hushed and shackled for too long. Space to grapple with hard topics gave me a keener insight into who I am as a writer and what I want to communicate as a woman of faith. I was able to unearth a facet of my voice in the presence of a caring community of writers who made room for me to draft my way through my word-wrestling.

Community can support us in our search for what we believe about issues of love, race, relationships, religion, and politics, and more. Perhaps there are moments we don’t fully know our writing souls until we have fought for every word laying along our hearts like broken down timber waiting to build something beautiful. There might be times we let the words simmer in the hardness of our inner ache. We may allow our discomfort to silence us. We may even make excuses for our quiet when what we need is a gentle nudge that says: “Come to this table. You’re welcome to work out the cacophony of words clanging around your heart.” I think writers need these moments of invitation and reprieve. It’s okay to be reacquainted with the nuance of our internal voice. It isn’t something we should fear but something we can embrace as part of our lifelong development as writers. We are in a process of evolving and refining which is a beautiful thing.

Do not be afraid to coax your words out from the inner silence. Articulate your heart in the writing even if, and especially when it sounds messy and scary. For me it happened in a writing group, so find your safe people and ask them to listen, to ask questions, to gently challenge you. When you hear yourself and see your words, you’ll hear your voice, and its variance.You may find your voice reveal itself as a branch of the tree of what you’re already passionate about, and it was waiting for you to give it roots and breath.

May you find the courage and grace to loosen your words, refine your voice, and fall in love with the way your soul represents your words again and again.

Marvia is a Texas writer/creative soul who enjoys writing, making art, laughing loudly, baking, dancing ridiculously because it’s fun, and smashing lies that keep people from living whole. Join her at marviadavidson.com. You can also follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

While I’m on maternity leave with Baby Milo, a few dear friends have written pieces just for you all. I know you’ll enjoy them, and I hope you’ll find some new writers to follow and add to your community. Today’s post is by the lovely Suzanne Terry.

Most of the writers I meet describe their writing practice as either their hobby or their work (or a hybrid of the two).

If writing is your hobby, it’s probably okay to wait for inspiration. I enjoy dancing, but I wouldn’t enjoy it as much if I forced myself into a must-dance-at-least-four-times-a-week expectation in order to feel like I had a right to say I like doing it. That’s how hobbies become burdens.

But when I have a specific writing goal I want to accomplish, doing so will require me to treat it like a job at some point. If I’m honest with myself, what I think of as writer’s block can more accurately be termed as a failure to show up and do the work.

I don’t know about your job, but I don’t just get to show up at the university where I am employed when I feel like it. I come to work when I’m tired. I come to work on the days I don’t care. I come to work when I have 10,000 other responsibilities on my to-do list. I come to work when I would rather be anywhere but there.

The magical thing about showing up is that, even when my workday starts out as a big pile of the don’t-wannas, it doesn’t end that way most of the time. Nice moments conspire to inspire me:

An officemate will have already made the coffee when I arrive so that I can caffeinate with minimal effort.

One of my committees will have a productive meeting that, in retrospect, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

I will get to help a student resolve a problem that was causing them a great deal of anxiety.

Treating writing like it’s my job works the same way. Even when I would rather gnaw my arm off than sit down at my computer, making a writing schedule and sticking to it gives me the opportunity to create my own inspiration. My process isn’t fancy. I just start making sentences. I type one word…and then another…until my scheduled time is over. Inspiration usually does show up after a while. But I almost always have to make the first move.

Now, I’m not a patient person. If, after about ten minutes, I’m still not feeling it, I fall back on tried-and-true methods that refuel my drive to write. For example, I collect snippets. I squirrel away overheard conversations, passing thoughts I have throughout the day, intriguing quotes, etc., in the notes app on my phone. If I’m stuck, I grab a snippet and use it to write a random scene (or mini-rant or essay, if I’m writing nonfiction). The scene may not make the final cut in editing, but it often sparks enough creativity to lead to something that does.

Your inspiration practice may look different from mine. You might not even want to give it a 10-minute chance. A brisk walk around the block before you sit down to write could be what you need to prepare yourself mentally for the task ahead. Making enough time to read a book you love for a few minutes could remind you of the kind of writer you want to be. If you want to be inspired, tap into whatever inspires you and make it a part of your writing practice.

You don’t have to wait for it.

Suzanne Terry writes fiction and foodie nonfiction and is on schedule to complete a rough draft of her first fiction manuscript in June. She blogs and Instagrams about books, food, justice, and coffee. She reads broadly and deeply, loves dancing, and tolerates running.

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Testimonials

Andi’s editing services are amazing. After reading the rough draft of my memoir, she encouraged me to dig deeper, to be more vulnerable, to push through until the real meat of my story shone through. With her suggestions, I was able to approach my work with a new perspective, and it encouraged me to keep writing and to make my work the best I could possibly make it. Her encouragement and gentle nudging helped me push through and finish.

Jamie KocurFirst-Time Author and Songwriter

“Andrea helped me revise a lot of my work. She was a great editor who worked patiently with me and really tried to understand what I was trying to communicate. She is a definite hire!”

“Andi was a great help in preparing my resume for distribution. While I greatly appreciate her writing skills, I was worried that she would not have the ‘business’ perspective that I needed. That worry went unfounded and Andi provided both an analytical and literary perspective to the review process that made my resume much stronger.”